The following excerpts from an essay of the 2009 Class Valedictorian present a heartwarming description St. Ann School.
“…I will leave this school with more understanding of other cultures and types of people than most people obtain in a lifetime... My class is the perfect melting pot because of what we learn from one another. Over the last ten years, I have learned not only what can be taught in a classroom, but what can only be learned through life experiences…My classmate’s’ cultures have diversified me, their rituals teaching me every step of my journey through adolescence…Members of my class come from many different walks of life. I always seemed to sense this, but I fully realized it when we had an assignment to write to Oprah Winfrey about a school she developed in South Africa for underprivileged girls. My letter was sincere and well-written, but the letter of one of my classmates brought her audience to tears. My classmate’s life in Jamaica was profoundly different from mine in Connecticut…She had to stop reading [her letter out loud] because of the strong emotions her difficult past brought up…That was when we realized we wanted to help…This is when I realized that I would have learned so much less, felt so much less, if my class was average. But my class is not average, and because of this, I am not average."
